A human rights case brought by Afghan asylum seeker R Saeedi could throw the already broken asylum system into further chaos if successful.
Saeedi claims he arrived in Greece in 2008, before making his way to the UK.
From the court papers, "On 12 January 2009 the claimant claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, having entered illegally hidden in a lorry. During his screening interview he claimed to have left Afghanistan on 23 November 2008 and arrived in Iran 7 days later. After that he travelled to Turkey, arriving on 5 December 2008. From Turkey he travelled through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany before arriving in Belgium"
"Then he travelled to the United Kingdom. He claimed to have used an agent, to whom his uncle paid between $11,000 and $12,000, to arrange his trip to the United Kingdom. He asserted that he had been unable to claim asylum in any of the countries through which he travelled because he was, at all material times, under the control of an agent".
Oddly, it seems he didn't initially mention Greece, that appeared later in the court papers, where it reads "In neither the interview nor the statement did the claimant make any reference to having passed through Greece or to having been imprisoned and ill-treated for two months in Turkey"
"In his witness statement dated 13th November 2009 the claimant now describes arriving in Greece by boat from Turkey and travelling at night time in a small motorboat in dangerous conditions".
The UK attempted to remove Saeedi back to Greece, under rules that Saeedi's claim had to be considered in Greece, but Saeedi has challenged this with the allegation that his fundamental rights would be violated since Greece was unable to process his claim.
Should his case be succesful, and it is beginning to look like it may well be, with Verica Trstenjak, Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, concluding that a transfer to Greece would create a real risk that Saeedi's fundamental rights would be violated, it would create a situation whereby we could return no asylum seeker to Greece under current conditions.
Greece would become an easy stepping stone into the EU, once arriving there any asylum seeker could make it to the UK, or other EU nations, and become that countries problem. First safe country provisions, already flawed and exploited, would suffer a major blow.
One nation within the EU's failings to adhere to - admittedly insane - human rights and asylum codes could create a scenario where every other country has to pick up the pieces and deal with the floods of asylum seekers looking to take advantage.
Britain, with its far too generous benefits system, and an asylum system in which all the trump cards lie with the immigrant, would become a likely destination of choice and our adherence to EU diktats would leave us powerless.
Greece could well become another Trojan Horse, allowing the entire world to get into the rest of the EU and have their claims for asylum considered not at point of entry but at effectively the country of their choice.
How long before other EU countries cotton on if this is successful, stop processing asylum claims, and wait for human rights courts to decide that the asylum seekers who wound up inside their borders can be safely shunted on to a stupider country, perhaps one such as Britain.
A human rights case brought by Afghan asylum seeker R Saeedi could throw the already broken asylum system into further chaos if successful.
